On the surface, it may seem surprising, but, except for the degree of difficulty, geocide would be one of the most common crimes in the world. Yesterday, we all enjoyed our laugh at Howard Camping, and today I stand up to point out that we are all Howard Campy.
Admit it. You've wanted to wipe clean the earth of its bipeds. It's ok. You're not alone.
Everybody, after all, wants to destroy the world, but it's beyond our power. Even linguistically and conceptually, it's the same as fornication, which Baudelaire complained is a crime that one cannot commit without an accomplice. That mental accomplice is the passive voice. We want the world to be blown to smithereens and do not want to admit that we wish we could do it. I wish all Rome had one neck to wring, Emperor Booties said (Suetonius, Twelve Caesars, Caligula 30), but the rest of us either have a stronger sense of shame or a small parcel of empathy.
I assume you're interjecting or thinking I'm off my meds by now. After all, you're far too sweet and innocent to have such desires.
[Yeah. Not to mention telling me how “everybody” feels? A wee bit presumptuous, yes?]
I was hoping you'd ask that.
[Crud. Digress, and I'm out of here.]
I only infer. I don't know it's true, really, but observation suggests that we all harbor such feelings.
Do you remember the horrors of high school and puberty? Do you recall at all the hideous mistakes you made of confidence or insecurity? Did your twenties involve any, oh, self-absorption? Were your parents unfair to you? Did you ever wish that you could be a super hero?
[I. am. a. superhero.]
Yes, well, apocalypse has two aspects, the meaning and the appeal. The attraction and impulse toward apocalypse have little to do with the meaning of apocalypse, no matter which kind you mean. This isn't a digression, either.
The central meaning of the Apocalypse is religious and spiritual. Almost none of the people salivating on their pulpits about “end times” are speaking of this meaning, for it is a very, very quiet thing. Look at Jesus's parable of the wise and foolish virgins for an idea about the apocalypse's meaning: it is reunification of man with God. It is a healing of the great divorce of man from perfection. It is seeing clearly and loving purely and having error wash away. It is, in fact, a matter of universal healing for the People of God.
The central appeal of the apocalypse is something quite other. The appeal of it is scary. The appeal of apocalypse is the idea of getting to be B.M.O.E. (big man on earth).
[Yeah, yeah. Hey, Binky, ever hear of a thesis statement?]
Resolved: the apocalyptic as eschatological impulse is operative in literature and art throughout contemporary culture as a byproduct of psychological, economic, and class stresses, but as a sublimation which prevents a direct address of genuine issues and therefore denigrates both the religious or scientific vehicle of such visions and the classes that imbibe them.
[You don't have to be a jerk about it.]
We have whole rafts and wagons of apocalyptic literature and apocalyptic film, and I'm not talking about religion, either. In fact, in the “apocalypse” genre, Christian fundamentalists probably occupy the smallest carton in the shipping container. There is a reason for an ongoing appeal of the world's end, and that is that we love, simply love the idea of the world being destroyed minus one-to-five. (Douglas Adams, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy mentions “infinity minus one” as the very "last number.” Well, the cosmocides we love are obliteration minus a few.)
Young folks, according to the psychology textbook I had in high school in the 1970's, daydream with two types of fantasy: suffering hero and conquering hero. (Here are someone's notes: good to know that psych is the same.) The conquering hero fantasy is where the teenaged boy dreams of being a SEAL Team VI sniper whooping all opposition, killing bad guys, and having that girl who sits one row over and two up take off her top in appreciation, or the teenaged girl dreams of being recognized as the beauty she really is, swept away by the millionaire male model, taken to Tiffany's for a week, and then shows off her power.
[Sexist, don't you...]
It's not me!
[think?]
It's not! This is how it was and may still be taught!
[And you're powerless to fix it?]
I'm a suffering hero.
[That's an oxymoron, moron.]
A “suffering hero” is the put-upon creature who fantasizes about dying or leaving. Then everyone will miss him or her and have vast, tearful testimonials. The whole school will drown in tears. The family will be unable to function without the missing member. The whole world may stop, in fact.
Well, I don't know nothing about no ego displacement, but the dichotomy of butt kicking or butt kicked is a pretty wide goal post, so the “suffering/conquering heroine” will have to do for our conversation today. Cartoons and fairy tales play right to the trope, too. Peter Parker or David Banner: suffering heroes until his innate virtues are recognized after he gains the power of a conquering hero. Cinderella is the best suffering heroine of all, because it is the suffering that conquers (in Charles Perrault's 1692 version, which is the version of the story by that title, the material was refashioned explicitly to be Christian and reward suffering and to repay evil with good). Most of us find that Aristotle was right: fiction is superior to reality, because it relates what should or must occur rather than what really does occur. What really does occur is that the cinder girl gets dumped on, the nerd gets beaten up while the supermodel next door with an abusive father becomes a drug addict.
It's not fair that the world does not recognize merit. It's bad that bad people win and good people are badly treated. And let's not even get near the subject of the unfairness of love. We all know that the right people love the wrong people, and, if you disagree with that, then at least you'll agree that vice versa.
If the world were destroyed-minus-a-few, that would be great, wouldn't it? Then everyone would be able to see just how virtuous the survivors (you and the object of desire, plus a few objects of contempt) are. All of the institutions that get in the way would be gone.
If you still think that this is purely religious, we can introduce two world-minus-a-few killers and see how they play out. You are a good person, and your merits are not rewarded (no matter how rewarded you are, you will think this is so, by the way). So, if there were a super-plague that killed everyone-minus-a-few, then the institutions like the social cliques in school or the corporations or your boss or racism would be gone, and people would see you for who you are, and you would be recognized. You would become a superhero(ine), in fact. If, on the other hand, Christ returned and separated the lambs from the goats, then obviously your inward virtue would be called forth and rewarded, and all the corrosive institutions would be obliterated. Sweet!
When I was in high school I absolutely loved Alas, Babylon. It's a good novel even now. I wanted every nuclear holocaust novel I could get. I passed out of that phase, and so I saw Cormac McCarthy's The Road as a nostalgic novel, in a way – complete with religious allegory. (Why, though, in nuclear war, is punctuation always the first casualty?) But apocalypses come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Sometimes we get population out of control, sometimes all die from plague, and very often we get horror movie apocalypses where “everyone” is a zombie-minus-a-few. In fact, if we put the Zombie mania in the mix, we start to see just how common our desire for a destroyed world is. Then we can have our traditional Robinson Crusoe (I guess that was the pilot for “Dual Survival” – one barefoot, one obstreperous).
In the apocalypse of our dearest desiring, we get a magic eraser to clear all the brush away. It's a way of getting super powers by having native powers in bas relief. We all want it at some point, but we dare not admit that we're looking forward to it.
Those absolutely insane right wingers hanging out with Bo Gritz and waiting for the looter meltdown that they know/hope will come are jonesing for the end. The militias are rehearsing their chance. Each of them has at heart this idea of finally getting to be the hero of daydreams.
[So you're going to give a pass to Howard Cramping? You want us to go hug the nearest lunatic?]
Christian fundamentalists who not only predict the end but seem to want to force it are easy to find, too. They are not cuddly. They're a bit perverse, actually. They are also -- set down this -- heterodox.
The apocalypse in the Bible is pretty brief. “The Revelation of John” may not be a prophecy of the future at all, but supposing that it were, its narrative is pretty brief. Its symbology is very heavy, but the events are few. What Jesus said is very brief as well. In addition, Protestant fundamentalists believe in Biblical sufficiency (all you need is the Bible – no saints or tradition), so you would figure that … well … there wouldn't be a whole lot more to say on the subject.
Wrong. Tim LeHaye has managed to get twelve novels out of this brief narrative. You might imagine that he'd have to add things that aren't in the Bible to do so, and your imagination would be backed up. Oh, he puts all sorts of things in there. His “Rapture Rangers” go about after the Rapture to work during the tribulation, etc. In other words, they get to be real Christian Soldiers because all the faith gets removed as they get to battle Satan and anti-Christ in personal and incarnate ways. That's so, so much easier than the muddled, confusing world of reality, where Christians have to have faith, have to trust, have to listen to God and trust in the Spirit.
[They get to have firefights with the devil. Kewel!]
Not so much. It's very Chuck Colson, very Father Coughlin (see CHARACTER FLAW by KAMunston, here at DKos). They get to the Jews burning, for example. It's quite militant and militating and … well... not really supported by the Bible so much as it is by other pastors talking to each other.
If we can bracket this weird group, though – and it's a big bracket – then the other forms of end times coveting seem to be about justice.
Those rabid, ravenous, and heretical, people wanting to burn up all the oil in the world because there is no history are not in the mainstream of anything, including apocalyptics. For most of those who gravitate toward the apocalypse, it's justice and a fresh start. The groups in question, just as much as the teenager who reads zombie books, feel persecuted and beaten, and they look to the flash of lightning and the reversal of things. Only then can they relish the idea of the damning of the world around them.
Non-eschatological Christians pause at that. Those of us not looking for the end to come and hoping for it are at least a bit anxious about the loss of the sinning.
[So, kids like apocalypse and stupid fundies do. That's not me!]
It's pretty nearly everyone, I'm afraid. In our dark hours or hours in the dark, we tend to fall into these fantastic situations where either we can get those super powers (benign) or where we are called upon by disaster to be the hero we always were. Since the 15th century at least, folks have been claiming that It All Went Wrong with institutions, that we are good folks, really, once you get to know us, but the moment we got churches, schools, governments, social classes, and other institutions, It all went awry. The cataclysm wipes all that away, and the apocalypse sets all on a true plan.
E.P. Thompson, in The Making of the English Working Class made an observation that seemed so incredibly true that when I read it I hung onto it. It seemed very profound to me. I'm a little bothered, because I've made his point to other people who claim to have read the book, and they've wanted to give me credit, but it's his idea. What he said was that the economically dispossessed sublimate their class struggle into millennialism. He was using a Freudian term, but the idea is that people whose way of life has been destroyed and who have no way of understanding what is happening to them and no clear opponent to protest against will be left with anxiety and despair without an outlet. This despair should go to the proper cause – the power loom eliminating the carding industry, or the enclosure laws destroying the cottage weaving trade – but it goes underground into a hope for a new world, a cataclysm where God will give the justice that is needed.
That seems blindingly true to me.
In fact, it seems to me that we can understand our poorer evangelical brothers and sisters' obsession with end times that way today, just as we can understand our poorer unemployed brothers and sisters' obsession with zombies and germ warfare and other slate-cleansing events this way. We can add in the corollary fantasy – the discovery of a New World (Pandora and the great tree's Unobtainium) where the average schlub gets to be a smurf-colored amphetamine star. Our entire economic order has been tossed into the Pop-o-Matic, and there is no way to be a secure worker, even if you're a lucky and skilled worker. We're all dreaming of the reset button.
Whole classes are, in effect, as insecure as a high school first year worrying about being fat or ugly or poorly dressed or short. We all wish that almost all of the world would end... minus a few.